fuanku.cc 
Draco’s mouth drops open. Then it moves soundlessly for a moment, as though Harry— impossibly—has somehow robbed him of the power of speech.
“Am I gay?” Draco repeats finally, voice cracking on the last word. “Am I—Potter, what the fuck, of course I’m gay! What have I ever done to send the impression I was anything but gay? Oh my god,” he adds, sounding appalled, “have I become such an eccentric shut-in that I read as straight somehow? No, no, that can’t be right, it must just be that you’re an imbecile—Potter. You imbecile. How on earth could you not know that?”
Harry’s never actually offended anyone by assuming they weren’t gay before; in his admittedly limited experience, it usually goes the other way. Not that he’d assumed Draco was straight, necessarily, just—
“I guess I’ve never really thought about it,” Harry admits, shrugging. “Sorry?”
Draco raises his eyes briefly heavenward, as though trying to communicate the depth and breadth of Harry’s idiocy to some higher power. “God save us all from the observational prowess of straight men.”
Harry can’t help it; he grins a little into his glass. “Whoa there, Malfoy. Who says I’m straight?”
Draco’s mouth drops open for the second time in as many minutes. After a second, his voice flattened out in shock, he says, “You’re not.”
“I’m not,” Harry confirms, and is deeply entertained by the way Draco’s body relaxes and then tenses up again immediately when he continues, “gay, that is. Bisexual, I definitely am.”
He doesn’t get the chance to find out what Draco’s going to say to that, because at that exact moment George Weasley stumbles up to the table. He’s clearly very drunk; he pats Harry twice on the top of my head, yells, “Where’s my jacket?” and then sees Draco.
His body goes very still, his only movement the way his eyes are getting wider with every second. Draco makes a little choking noise, the one that means he’s trying to stop himself from laughing but not really all that hard; Harry kicks him under the table.
Draco kicks back, of course, but at least he doesn’t laugh in George’s face and make it weird for everyone.
“Harry,” George says after a minute, turning his head so he can ping-pong his gaze back and forth between them. “Harry. 'M friend. 'M brother. I don’t—wanna alarm you? But,” he lowers his voice to what he obviously thinks is a whisper, but is really more of a shout, and jerks his thumb at Draco. “That’s Draco Malfoy, that is.”
“I know,” Harry says, amused. Draco is making a face somewhere between entertained and horrified, though Harry thinks horrified is winning. “I was just talking to him.”
“But,” George says, visibly mystified, “it’s Draco Malfoy.”
“Indeed it is,” Draco says, voice cool. “He can hear you, by the way.”
George looks briefly at Draco, and then turns pleading eyes on Harry.
“Well,” Harry says, with an apologetic little shrug, “he can.”
“Draco!” calls a pleased voice, and Neville steps up behind George, a drink in each hand. “It’s so good to see you!”
“D’you know, I think I’m having a stroke,” George says, and stumbles away before anyone can reply.
“I had no idea you were going to be here tonight,” Neville continues. He doesn’t seem to notice the way Draco flushes and darts a glance at Harry before looking hastily away, but Harry sure does.
“Yes, well,” Draco says, sounding well and truly caught. “Potter invited me.”
The gatecrashing little git. Harry grins at him, delighted by this turn of events, and is rewarded with Draco’s filthiest scowl.
“I did,” Harry tells Neville, for the sole purpose of winding Draco up. “I said ‘Oh, please, Malfoy, we need you at the Gryffindor pub night, everyone there has such fond memories of you, whatever will I do if you don’t come—’”
“And I said, ‘Play a sad song on the violin from your dark little corner of solitude like the tragic headcase you are,’” Draco says, smiling wide and mean at Harry. “Then he threw himself on the floor and pounded his fists and begged, it was really quite shaming. What was I to do? Honestly, I had no choice.”
Harry laughs and makes a rude gesture; Draco smiles placidly and kicks him again under the table.
A little mistily, Neville says, “This is so nice. Do you ever think about what it would have been like if we were all friends at school?”
Sounding disgusted, Draco says, “Oh, what, certainly not,” in the same moment Harry, equally horrified, says, “Seriously, mate? C’mon.”
They grin at each other. Neville sighs.
“Fools,” he says, but cheerfully enough. “No sentimentality in your souls, even on this happiest night!”
Harry eyes the drink in Neville’s hand speculatively, wondering just how many he’s had to put away to get to that sentence to come out of his mouth.
Draco says, “Oh? I don’t think I’ve heard the happy news. Enlighten me.”
“You didn’t tell him? Harry,” Neville chides. “It’s only that Hermione’s pregnant!”
“Well, that is exciting,” Draco says, voice neutral, pleasant. “Please pass along my best wishes to the happy couple.”
“You can pass 'em yourself, they’re around here somewhere.” Neville raises the drinks in his hands as if in explanation and adds, “I have to go, Gin’s probably thinking her booze and I were abducted. Come find me later! We can talk about the spot in my garden I have picked out for Vicky; she’ll get much better sun there than she does in your attic.”
“When pigs fly!” Draco calls at his retreating back. “That man, honestly.”
Harry doesn’t say anything. His bleak mood, which had mysteriously vanished without his really noticing, returned the moment Neville brought up the baby. Which is so stupid, it’s not fair of him and it’s stupid, and he should just suck it the hell up and get over it.
He throws back the rest of his Firewhiskey, slams the glass down on the table. It hits the wood with a satisfying thunk and Harry looks pointedly from it to Draco to the flask in Draco’s hand.
Draco pauses, but then, slowly, he nods. He pours some Firewhiskey—less than last time, but still a generous measure—into the glass, and then sits back against the booth again to regard Harry, a considering look in his eyes.
“Potter…” he starts, but is drawn up short when Ron and Hermione themselves are suddenly standing next to the table.
“I TOLD YOU,” Ron crows at the top of his voice. Hermione, who is of course sober, leans away from him a little, wincing at the direct shot of volume and booze-breath to her face. “I told you it was Malfoy, Hermione! I told you it was!”
“Yes,” Hermione says, all loving exasperation, “you did. And I said, yes, Ron, it looks like it is, how interesting, perhaps we should leave them alone, but,” she gives Harry and Draco an apologetic little shrug, “here we are. Hello, Draco.”
“Granger,” Draco says. His tone is warm on her name, but retreats into the vague, pleasant one Harry thinks of as his public voice when he adds, “Weasley. I hear congratulations are in order?”
“They are, thanks,” Hermione says, grinning. “For you too, right? I’ve been hearing great things about the new layout of the museum, and actually I’ve been meaning to Floo you. I must’ve had two dozen calls this month from parents who saw the article in the Prophet and want to sign their children up for the L.E.A.R.N. program.”
“Really? They’re not afraid their little angels are going to be subject to a traumatizing experience that will scar them for the rest of their lives?” Draco says it lightly, like it’s a joke, but Harry can tell that it’s not one.
And apparently Ron can too, because he puts his hands flat on the table, stares down at Draco with an intensity that Draco clearly finds unnerving at best and, at worst, outright alarming. “Look, mate—can I call you mate?”
“I find myself somehow incapable of drawing up an adequate response,” Draco says faintly.
Ron seems to take it as permission enough, because he says, “Mate. I know it’s—slow going, y’know, some cases are just slow. That’s how it is. And I mean, I’ve always thought you were a bit of, well, a git and all, but. Mate. The Aurors have your back, d’you know that?”
“Uh,” says Draco, clearly gobsmacked. Even through the dark cloud of Harry’s mood, it’s pretty funny.
“It’s true!” Ron says. “'Course it’s true, 'cause see, I’m like, the boss now—a boss—you know. And so the Aurors’ve got—the backs that I say they’ve got. And like I said, you’re not my cuppa an’ all, but I’ve got Harry’s back forever, you know?” He grabs the top of Harry’s head and wiggles it a little without looking away from Draco; Hermione chokes on a laugh, and even Harry feels the corners of his mouth twitch with a smile. “Forever. And that means I gotta have yours, too, right, because Harry is, like, so obviously, totally—”
“Oh my god, Ron, it’s—uh—the Chudley Cannons!” Hermione says, eyes wide.
